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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23863810">green</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmyeccentric/pseuds/emmyeccentric'>emmyeccentric</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>electric colors [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Medical School, be it very brief, graphic and accurate depiction of dissection, i miss medical school</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:47:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,570</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23863810</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmyeccentric/pseuds/emmyeccentric</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s enigmatic, bright, and hopeful; he is the insect, carefully prancing across the trigger hairs of a carnivorous plant.</p><p>Or, the fresh sting of spearmint or absinthe, the promise of youth, the color of both new growth and slimy rot</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>electric colors [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/792990</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>green</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>shit’s crazy, but anyway here’s a pre-canon fic bc i miss school</p><p>brought down the rating cause we’re all grown ups here and we all like some gore (and i am one of those ‘m should be reserved for smut’ elitists)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>It’s past 11 when the last student leaves the lab, and another half-hour before all the instruments are cleaned and put away. His fingers are buzzing when they go to open the body bag, the zipper echoing like a scream in the empty lab. The dead man before him is one of the best he’s had; not too fatty, no liver disease, bowel obstruction or mesenteric ischemia. He throws back the omentum like an oily sheet to reveal the viscera of interest and  breathes out the day as he grabs his pencil. Hannibal grabs his pencil with an eager hand, and the velvety blank pages of his sketchbook are tranquil and welcoming. He’s halfway through the web-like vessels of the jejunal arcade, when a flash of ashen blonde breaks his repose.</p><p>She doesn’t greet him and her gaze is fixed as she pulls her silky hair back and snaps on gloves. She opens her anatomy atlas and the body bag, grabs a probe and her tiny fingers shuffle around her cadaver’s open chest.</p><p> He continues to stare at her. “Hello, Hannibal,” her normally quiet voice is bolstered by the vacant room, her eyes never leaving where she has her probe sandwiched underneath the aortic arch.</p><p> “Ms. Du Maurier, almost midnight on a Friday? How ghoulish.”</p><p>“Our thoracic anatomy test is Monday,” she finally looks up from the body of the table, with a subdued smile and teasing eyes,  “And I like ghoulish. Ghoulish means quiet; I can focus completely on her.” She motions her shoulders toward the woman who used to look human. She focuses intently, wrists shifting, until she breathes out a “<em>there we go”.</em></p><p>In her palm she holds the woman’s heart, casted in blood long unmoved. Hannibal tries not to notice the flicker of joy she quickly tries to snuff out, beyond her years in the way she tries to maintain decorum. “It always feels so archaic when we do this; maybe I can sacrifice it to the Gods for a decent score, hm?” She smiles expectantly at him. In her jest, he sees Beatrice, ready to devour Dante’s incinerated heart and rise to paradise. He can only hope that she is that ambitious.</p><p>“Given your late night, no pyre should need to be built,” Hannibal reassures.  They gaze at the red-gray muscle together, in silence. “But what is unusual about this particular relic?”</p><p>She dances her fingers down the left ventricle, across the ridges and bifurcations of the major coronary vessels. “She’s left dominant. There’s the posterior descending artery.” The metal probe gleams against the rubbery tube of the artery she mentions.</p><p>“Very good. See? I must ask you not to hold any unnecessary rituals in my anatomy lab.”</p><p>“Only in emergent scenarios of plague or pestilence.” She turns her attention back to the open thoracic cavity, ribs surrounding it like jagged cliffs warning of the abyss below.  </p><p>Hannibal gives the body a quick cataloging glance; the queasy green of the makes it look extraterrestrial. “I’ll leave you to it, Bedelia,” she thaws a little when he uses her Christian name, looks even <em>more</em> alive amongst the death and steel, “And I’ll be over here if you need me.” He makes his way back to the corner of the lab, his makeshift studio. He pauses for a moment, as she appears to be chewing on words unsaid.</p><p>“Hannibal?”, she pauses, “When you were in first year, were there things you didn’t<em> like</em>? Things you found not as interesting? I feel as though my proclivities are getting in the way of an open mind.” Her wet, doll-like eyes seem even more so, like a child asking if they can still have dessert.</p><p>“Of course,” making his way back to the table, “The human body is a marvel. But just as every system has its purpose, every human mind has its own niche and inclinations.”</p><p>Her eyes alight with amusement, and she looks almost like she pities him. “You speak like you’re some sage in an epic,” she chuckles, more relieved, “or something.”</p><p>“Well, have I restored your faith in your quest?,” he nudges her shoulder briefly, “Or something?” Bedelia hums warmly in the affirmative. “And, what ‘proclivities’ are holding you back, Dr. Du Maurier?”</p><p>“I <em>hate</em> cardiovascular and pulmonary. It’s all so <em>mechanical</em> and cold, pumps and gravity and endless cycles. For things that are life-sustaining, they surely don’t seem <em>alive</em>.”</p><p>“Those are quite lofty standards for a vital organ system. What seems vital <em>to you,</em> Bedelia?”</p><p>“I like psychiatry; part machine, part mysticism.”</p><p>She’s enigmatic, bright, and hopeful; he is the insect, carefully prancing across the trigger hairs of a carnivorous plant. He thinks of his aunt and his heart twitches, a sensation unfamiliar. Hannibal pauses, considering. “Close her up. I want to show you something.” Bedelia shuffles,  the steel casket moaning as it clasps to shut over the body bag. He takes her back in an adjacent (normally locked) room. The room is pitch black before a switch causes the fluorescent bulbs to jump over each teal-colored body bag, like frost crawling across the grass at night.</p><p>He makes his way to a table and unzips the bag. “This is between us, understand?” She looks at him gratefully, an unspoken agreement. The bag opens to reveal a nearly emaciated, heavily tattooed corpse, a man in his 40’s, jaw agape in a silent, eternal call. “Sometimes, our cadavers come from prisons. Unclaimed. This would be one of them.” Bedelia runs a gloved hand over the corpse’s chin, feeling the stubble there.</p><p>“Young,” she hums.</p><p>“Liver cancer. Hepatitis.”</p><p>“Is that what you’re going to show me?”, the fizz of eagerness evident in her voice.</p><p>“No,” he turns to a table behind him, rummaging for tools, <em>ah</em>-ing as he finds his prize, “Have you ever used an oscillating saw?”</p><p> “No.” She’s just plain smiling now.</p><p>“Well, you’re going to impress your colleagues in a few weeks.” He takes his place at the cadaver’s head, taking a few steps back. “Come. Stand in front of me.” She does as she’s told; the minty tingle of Noxzema blends with the lemon verbena of her shampoo, and his senses appreciate the refreshing break from old blood and formaldehyde. He grasps the handle of the saw, right hand towards the flared base, and left on the neck of the instrument, still within safe distance from its blade. “Hold it like this, close to my hands, I’ll guide you.” Her hips draw closer to his as she matches his grip, and he almost loses focus. “It takes more force than you think, and you may think you’re damaging important structures, but I assure you you’re not. Ready?”</p><p>“Totally,”she asserts, her young American vernacular turned on by her excitement.</p><p>The saw is loud for its size, and the recoil makes Bedelia jump as the blade sinks into bone, but soon they develop a smooth tandem rhythm. Like a cartographer’s compass, they mindfully drag the saw in an ellipse around the skull. Hannibal places the tool on the table, and he carefully cradles the man’s lifeless face between his hands, removing the cranium with a pop.</p><p>The papery dura mater shimmers like mother-of-pearl on the sea floor. Hannibal hands the reverent, bright-eyed student forceps a scalpel. “Gently cut around, release the dura mater from the occiput, and the temporal bone. The cut right down the central sulcus and peel it back.”</p><p>The protective layer is brittle, friable, like the skin covering the flesh of a pistachio. Hannibal remains impressed with her fastidiousness and care, until she has very nearly freed the slimy flesh from it’s evolution-insured confines. “What now?” She asks, eyes never leaving the man’s half open face.</p><p>“Curl your fingers down towards the occiput. Use gentle pressure and release the cerebellum with your middle and index. And carefully remove it.”</p><p>Hannibal Lecter makes a lifelong decision this night, the moment he sees Bedelia Du Maurier holding a cerebral cortex for the first time. The look in her eyes is not one of awe, but one of triumph and curiosity. He likes to think he remembers her tongue darting out to wet her lips in anticipation. This woman is capable of great and terrible things, and he insists on keeping her around, lest he need her one day.</p><p>He approaches her, stooping down so they are cheek to cheek, staring at the brain dripping in her hands. “What is unusual about this particular relic?” He echos to her. She scrutinizes the organ, endearing furrow in her brow, then probes around its many gyri and sulci.</p><p>“Nothing?”</p><p>“Correct. Perfectly intact, flawless, even in the state of chronic illness. Except,” – he looks down at her sharp profile, “This particular brain was capable of raping, murdering, and dismembering five local teenage girls a few decades back.” Bedelia’ s eyebrows shoot up, fascination blooming lushly still behind her eyes.</p><p>“Cool,” she whispers, sputtering as she catches herself, “<em>Terrible</em>. But cool. Psychiatry, as I mentioned.”</p><p>They clean up the body in silence, and it thrills him that she digests her experience so thoroughly, so reflectively.</p><p>“It’s very late. I should head home,” she says, once everything is back in its place. “Thank you, Hannibal.”</p><p>“I just wanted to show you what you have to look forward to,” – he looks up bemusedly, “what you could grow up to be.”</p><p>“And what is that?”</p><p>“A brilliant psychiatrist, of course.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>           </p><p> </p>
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